


Spectrum

by valenstyne



Category: Death Note
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Extended Metaphors, F/M, Gen, Hal is my favorite, metaphor abuse, not my best work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-09
Updated: 2015-06-09
Packaged: 2018-04-03 15:47:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4106359
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valenstyne/pseuds/valenstyne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal feels like a blank puzzle piece, surrounded on all sides by pieces that are, if not identical, easily mistaken for one another.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spectrum

**Author's Note:**

> This is pretty old and I'm kinda iffy about it…but I don't think it's _completely_ terrible so I'm posting it anyway. The world needs more Halfic.

_We are all jigsaw pieces_ , Hal thinks as she sits in the SPK headquarters watching Near assemble another plain rectangle. Or maybe it’s the same one. All the puzzles he occupies himself with are solid white, the end result of his efforts empty, unrewarding space. Hal knows that he likes those because they are as close to difficult as anything is for Near, but sometimes she wants to replace them with color, with pictures, wants to see less stark, glaring _white_.

Near uses finger puppets to talk about the case, handcrafting one for each of the key players, but Hal does not feel like a puppet; puppets are at least a facsimile of life, a brightly painted illusion. Hal feels like a blank puzzle piece, surrounded on all sides by pieces that are, if not identical, easily mistaken for one another. She, Gevanni, Rester, the Japanese police—they are all pieces, and once Near has connected them he will step across the field of white and confront Kira on the other side.

Mello wasn’t like that. Mello was a blaze of color, solid and intense where Near is translucent and pastel, flying through life in a supernova of blood and glory, illuminating everything around him. He left brilliant smudges on everything he touched, vivid rainbows camouflaging the scorch marks underneath. Hal thinks that if he had been willing to work with Near rather than against him they would have been invincible, the unstoppable force and the immovable object, Near’s unmarked whiteness the perfect counterpoint to Mello’s neon fury. But Mello was too afraid that he likewise would become a jigsaw piece, that his vibrant hues would be erased and his edges reshaped until he snapped into place, another tiny, anonymous part of a whole.

Hal thinks that being unexceptional is the only thing Mello ever feared.

The past two days have been the hardest of the entire Kira case for Hal, bleak hours and blurred words settling around her like snow, too much time spent in this colorless fortress of metal and computers listening to Near explain the plan that will link the white jigsaw pieces into a final whole. Even when she is outside, transporting Amane and Mogi, the world looks gray and dim. She has tried to think of Mello, his fierceness and his radiance, but when she closes her eyes and tries to picture him all she sees are flames. 

The clock ticks loudly. On the floor, Near presses the final piece into the center of his puzzle and looks up at Hal. His eyes are like twin pools of black ink. “It’s time,” he says.

Hal takes a deep breath and thinks _this is where we find out if the pieces fit_. “Let’s go.”


End file.
